With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation...

We buy balloons, we let them go.

I have to return some videotapes

The better you look, the more you see.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

No one ever likes the right person.

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do?

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.

I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him.

And as the elevator descents, passing the second floor, and the first floor, going even father down, I realize that the money doesn't matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst

Faith opens many doors. Performance keeps them open.

I serve, " should be the motto of all the princes of the royal family of heaven.

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.

Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking

It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.

You know that if you lie to yourself, surely other people lie to themselves. And if they lie to themselves, they will lie to you also.

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today.

Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow.